I'm picking up thf for a static and would like a little info on the dagger progression. I leveled thf to 50 on another character like 4 years ago and am a little rusty. For instance, back then, hornetneedle was a great weapon but ive hear lately that it isnt worth the time now. here are the major daggers up until 70*:

34-46 Feds 46 Bones +1 48 hornet is amazing DOT, i like it for its level even no DWing. 50 COR pwns (also at this level /war needs to be in your SJ list) nothing wrong with DW COR at 50 either, otherwise /hornet not bone +1 56 Beetle+1 (or 2) or /war + shield 58 Chicken/ beetle+1 or chicken / shield (maybe this is viking level, i forget atm) 59 Darksteel +1 (1 and .war or 2 /nin 60+ I strongly reccomend /war form 60 till at least 72 depening on gear and merits at that level 65 Garuda's is crap, do not use it for EXP ever or fail. 68 Harpe + shield or Harpe + H Harpe Once you hit 68 NEVER USE A DAGGER BELOW LEVEL 68 EVER AGAIN (except for level caps)

After that If you can pull SK and Blau, use them at their levels, they are amazing, if not good options for saving for blau is Magnet, Behe +1s are popular as well, and Misercorde +1 is still a fine offhand in replacement of a missing SK.

Viking shield is level 48. Very good shield if your party allows. If you are partying on colibri, i would not suggest /war however. They're too fast and hit too hard. Your Dot boost will be destroyed by the fact that you just took 600 damage to bring a colibri to camp.

The pulling fast mobs is WAY exagerated. /nin for pulling only really mattered in the caveman days pulling raptors from halfway across a zone. They run fast and have multi attacks. The E.Ron Colibri are in a small area. The ley point Colibri are in a VERY small area. The regular Colibri (fight in the 60s) are in a VERY small area. The pink exp bags we all merit on are in a small area (particularly middle level). If you pull from anywhere near max range, you "might" get hit once. If you ever take more than 2 hits pulling, you:

A) are autorunning into a wall B) Tank/voker is drunk/afk/retarded and cant voke off you. C) Should listen to the rule about how to run away from bees. Dont zig zag. STRAIGHT LINE people.

If you take 600 damage pulling colibri anywhere in this game (on anything resembling a regular basis) you fail so very hard it hurts ME.

Only real time I got my *** beat pulling lolibri on any job was when camping in the pathway near the leypoint (or when camping at the leypoint but needing to pull birds from said pathway), where some of your potential pulls are rather far away. Almost every other camp has the birds pretty much right there.

I was DRG (using a Lamiabane to pull, yeah, lol @ me if you like, Lamiabane is the ****) and therefore obviously didn't have shadows. Got beat up on the long pulls but I was dual boxing a PL so it wasn't any real problem in my case, although it would have been so without said PL. I doubt THF as non-/NIN would have fared significantly better.

I have to agree that little birds are hardly a threat to any decent puller. With their repop times being low, and some not agroing or linking, flee should be up for the few you need to get at a distance.

You can also engage, pull, unlock and run backwards to try to get shield and parry skill on top of evasion while pulling. And if you are really scared, pull in evasion gear. /war is fine at every camp traditionally used at this stage of FFXI even when pulling.

I'm curious, why do you advocate /WAR at 60+? Do the benefits of Dual Wield lose their appeal over Double Attack and offhand bonuses?

It's situational, and semi-dependent on if you're pulling/what you're pulling/your PT makeup but it comes down to 15% delay reduction and off-hand weapon for /NIN vs. 25% attack for 3/5 minutes, compounded with the +10 attack from the Attack Bonus job trait, plus another 12 from Viking Shield, plus 10% DA in favor of /WAR. @60, Dancing Edge benefits a lot from all of this extra attack/DA, as does your DoT obviously.

Like Banalaty said, it's not like old-school VoS, where you had to resort to Sleep Bolts and Spartan Bullets to pull raptors from halfway across the zone in order to make it back to camp alive (I vividly remember doing this back then on RNG - **** was rough!)

@60 with Assassin, you can basically distribute your SA/TA however you want in order to be able to run to the next pull with as little hate as possible without worrying about the mob running after you as you go. You also shouldn't take much damage at all with /WAR with some smart playing and won't need the shadows from /NIN much at all.

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zellbaca wrote:

Second, that's not how spell animations work. We wrap our arms around our faces and magic beetle shadows and sh*t fly at the targets.

kenage wrote:

And yes before you ask I'm mexican and you better not **** me off about warrior and tequila or I will drop down from the donkey and hit you with my awesome guitar.

Like Banalaty said, it's not like old-school VoS, where you had to resort to Sleep Bolts and Spartan Bullets to pull raptors from halfway across the zone in order to make it back to camp alive (I vividly remember doing this back then on RNG - sh*t was rough!)

oh how i woefully remember...

Just out of curiosity, and please /flame off, but what about matron's and stylet, the stylet seems pretty decent to me.

Edited, Oct 13th 2009 1:41pm by Aryden

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Sir CorLeonisX: "Nah, SE will just declare it an exploit to fight him with jobs over 75 since it's not the "proper" way to kill it, and just ban us all instead."

Harpe and Sirocco are better and you get them earlier. You might be able to make an arguement for Stylet becuase of the dex/agi/enmity (I'm not running the maths), but you might as well wait one level and get blau.

I'm curious, why do you advocate /WAR at 60+? Do the benefits of Dual Wield lose their appeal over Double Attack and offhand bonuses?

Quote:

Sir Crystan wrote: I'm curious, why do you advocate /WAR at 60+? Do the benefits of Dual Wield lose their appeal over Double Attack and offhand bonuses?

It's situational, and semi-dependent on if you're pulling/what you're pulling/your PT makeup but it comes down to 15% delay reduction and off-hand weapon for /NIN vs. 25% attack for 3/5 minutes, compounded with the +10 attack from the Attack Bonus job trait, plus another 12 from Viking Shield, plus 10% DA in favor of /WAR. @60, Dancing Edge benefits a lot from all of this extra attack/DA, as does your DoT obviously.

^ /war gives thf a MUCH bigger boost in damage post (60) Dancing Edge and Assassin than it does before.

Before 60 a Thf is using viper bite and stacking sata with it in most situations. Berserk does very little for viper bite because the WS already doubles your attack. Add to that you get an offhand hit with /nin and you will likely be seeing higher average SATAVB's with /nin than /war.

So then, pre 60 its just a comparison of

/NIN: 15% combined delay reduction for both daggers (which is nothing to sneeze at in terms of DoT), off hand stat bonuses, offhand hit for Viper bite....and significantly greater survivability.

/WAR: Potentially 25% Attack 60% of the time (Its actually not. There is no way you will ever have berserk up on 60% of your swings. There are too many things happening in a party for this to be possible. Especially if you are pulling). A lot of people argue this as a DoT argument in favor or /war....personally I don't see enough of a difference in DoT between the two pre-60 to warrant using /war and leaving yourself vulnerable without shadows.

Edit: An argument could be made here that if you are hitting for 0's or are over camping that /war will outperform /nin because of berserk.

My response to that usually is that neither one of those things are your sub job's fault. You are either over camping and should move, or your gear/food is lacking (in this case, if you are unwilling/unable to upgrade, I'm sure there are situations where /war will perform better for you).

After 60, Dancing Edge Gets a HUGE boost from Berserk, as does your solo TA and SA. After this time you will have Triple Attack and double attack as well so you will not be swinging AS slow as you were before.

I have had this out with a few people, but I have never seen /war as a "clear winner" sub job until after 60.

Re Pink Bird Camps:

Almost every single one (Save a few pops in east ron (s)) is within a few steps of shooting distance from the exact spot you killed the last one. If you have a problem pulling birds.....I hate to see what you would have done pre ToA camps lol.

Thf/war is fun, especially in the level ranges where you have 1 baller weapon (48 and 68 come to mind). For non-leyline birds they are pretty easy to avoid getting hit. The colibri in thickets are packed close enough where 25' is sufficient. However the only exception that comes to mind is an empty leyline with a fast party the puller really needs /nin when you start pulling from the tunnel.

Though, I also need to wonder why you're pulling as thief anyways. Typically when I pulled we lacked a bard or corsair, which also meant no one could easily sleep mobs at camp. If I'm already going to be disengaged for a substantial amount of time, the damage difference from subs seems negligible and would value being able to tank the freshly pulled mob while the rest of the party finishes off the main one.

As far as Stylet, on my server it's a fraction of the price of a Blau so it could be a place holder for your offhand til you get an SK or another 10+ dps wep. 4dex/2agi and some delay seems like a pretty even trade for 1dmg/10atk.